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Fabulous, perfect for any cake!!

I am a huge baking fan and study cookery at school. I often make larger cakes/cupcakes for family occasions so I am experienced in the field of icing! Typical butter icing is a very British cake topping and pretty simple to make but I always use Betty Crocker Icing products as they taste incredible and are so easy to work with. I use the rich and creamy vanilla frosting mainly on cupcake in large swirls but do also find it works well as a binding medium between a sponge and a fondant icing.

When I use on cupcakes the icing comes out of the tub really smooth and is very easy to work with. It is thick and creamy and the vanilla taste is so strong and really compliments a plain sponge. If I were making a chocolate sponge I usually opt for the fudge version of this icing. The vanilla icing takes food colouring really well. I find sometime with butter icing/supermarket versions it doesn't mix with food colouring well and often splits leaving a big mess. However, this frosting takes colour well and still holds it's shape afterwards. It is also really easy to pipe this icing onto cakes as it is so thick. I often make those large cupcakes and find this icing piped on top has a great effect!

For using as a binding medium between fondant icing I usually heat up this tub in the microwave. as it is plastic you can do it straight in the tub. But you MUST remove foil tab first!!. Once heated it goes runny but still tastes great. this is smothered over a sponge keeps it moist and allows you to place and stick rolled fondant icing on top.

Overall, the tub is a really good size. I can ice a good 32 medium sized cupcakes with a single tub or even more mini cupcakes. Considering the product is so good it is also really reasonably priced. I purchase usually from Morrison or Tesco for just a few pounds. additionally for anyone who is thinking about this icing I would also recommend the chocolate fudge flavour or butterscotch. They all work in the same way but have distinct flavour which are really strong and delicious! definitely purchase this!! A+++ product.

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Great Icing from Betty Crocker.

~*~*~ Betty Crocker Ready to Spread Vanilla Icing ~*~*~

If there's one thing I adore to do, it's baking! I really enjoy it and my favourite part has to be decorating the cake, but sometimes I find it easier to cut corners and use ready made icing filling, making your own butter icing can be a bit of a pain when you require a lot as you end up using a load of butter and a load of icing sugar so this is something I buy quite often.

~ What is it? ~

This is a ready made Vanilla flavoured icing from Betty Crocker. It can be readily found in supermarkets.

It's very easy to use and tastes great!

~ Why I buy it ~

Well, as I have already mentioned above I buy this in place of making my own butter icing, I do sometimes make my own but I tend to favour this for the ease of use. There's no faffing around making your own butter icing it's already made up in the tub.

I bake cakes quite a lot, it's something I really enjoy. In the last few months alone I have made and decorated five cakes and that doesn't include the numerous batches of cupcakes and Victoria Sponges I have made inbetween.

This is so easy to use and a tub contains enough icing to cover and fill an 8" cake or up to 32 cupcakes, once opened you can refrigerate it and it keeps for 30 days.

Unopened the tubs have a fair shelf life, the latest one I have was bought in August but has a best before of July 2014, if you bake a lot and see them on offer buy a few!

~ Cake making ~

The last cake I made and decorated was a giant cupcake for my little one's second birthday. I bought candy melts to make the cupcake case, to do this I used the giant cupcake cake tin/mould as a mold to pour the melted blue chocolate into, after making sure it was covered in a thin coat I popped it in the fridge for a few minutes until set then repeated until all the chocolate was used and the case was sturdy enough to hold the cake.

It was then I moved onto baking the sponge, I made sure that I greased the tin to death! The top of the cupcake is swirled so I didn't want to risk it sticking and then poured in the cake mix that I had made. After baking and turning out of the tin onto a cooling rack I left it cool and then it was time for the filling and icing.

As the bottom was going into the giant cupcake case I first had to trim it down to fit, I then halved that and used this Betty Crocker Vanilla Icing to fill the bottom and I used jam on the top, I placed them back together and slotted the bottom half of the cupcake into the case, I then used this Vanilla Icing again on the top of the bottom portion of the cake to fill it, and used jam on the underneath of the lid of the cake, this was the giant swirled top. I then placed it together and I have to admit it looked amazing.

I wasn't sure how to decorate the top of the cake, should I ice it using Royal Icing or what?

But seeing how much of the Betty Crocker Icing I had left I decided to use that instead and rather than pipe, I spread the icing all over the top of the cake. I then placed a 2 candle in the top and dotted Haribo sweets around the top of the cupcake - My son's favourite sweets!

It looked incredible and I was so pleased with the result. My little one picked off the sweets and then ran his finger around the icing declaring yum at every finger lick ... He was impressed :).

Anyway enough of my baking tales, back to the product!

~ Can it be coloured? ~

Whenever I have tried to make coloured butter icing it always go wrong and starts to separate which isn't good when you want coloured icing on your cupcakes however this can be coloured without any harm coming to the icing.

I have made plenty of butterfly fairy cakes and filled the 'hole' in each cake with coloured Vanilla Icing and they look great. I have also made lots of cupcakes and piped the coloured icing on, this is something I like to do at Christmas time and have made really cute cupcakes and decorated them like Christmas tree's. I also like to do similar for Halloween and make orange pumpkin cupcakes, purple witch cakes and so on.

I tend to opt for gel colouring as I find it gives a better colour which stays bright but the liquid food colouring can also be used, use a tiny bit and keep checking the consistency if using the liquid as it can make the Icing go runnier which isn't what you want when piping icing onto a cake!

~ The taste?? ~

Well as of yet I think I have failed to mention the taste which of course is very important!

This is very sweet. I don't like vanilla ice cream but I do like this so I wouldn't say it has a strong vanilla taste, it is very alike to home made butter icing but it is sweeter.

In a cake it tastes divine, it doesn't taste overly sweet then but tasting it on a spoon or even by dunking in your finger it is toothache inducing sweet!

I think in a cake the sponge breaks the taste up but this keeps it all nice and moist and isn't cloying in your mouth.

Overall I would say it's a good taste to have with cakes!

~ Packaging and price ~

This Betty Crocker Vanilla Icing comes in a plastic tub, this has a red plastic lid that is easy to remove. Under the lid you will see another lid, this one is foil and is meant to be peeled off and is there for the freshness of the product before you buy it.

The tub really stands out on the shelf with it's pretty pink and red colouring.

The label gives us all the information we need and it can be peeled off to reveal instructions in different languages on the other side of the label.

This cost's around £2.25 a tub and I find this great value when you take into account the cost of making your own which requires a few different ingredients.

As mentioned above it is readily available in most supermarkets, I usually buy mine in either Asda or Tesco depending on where I am shopping at the time.

~ Overall thoughts ~

As you have probably already gathered I am a massive fan of this icing.

It's so easy to use and is handy for both cake filling and decorating.

I am due to make a Monster High cake for my niece's birthday and although I haven't decided on the overall design yet, this icing will be used to fill the cake, whether or not I colour it and use it decorate I haven't yet decided.

I would recommend this to anyone and everyone! It's not really cheating your just saving time and money by using it and I will continue to use, probably forever!

I hope I haven't bored you with this lengthy review, I started it thinking I would keep it short and sweet but it has turned into somewhat of an essay!

Thanks for reading :o) x

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Good product but overpowering flavour.

This is a fab icing to decorate cupcakes or fill cakes with. Found in the baking aisle in supermarkets most big stores stock it, this one and other flavours like the vanilla. Priced at 1.94 in asda, piping onto muffin size cupcakes you would expect to get about 12 out of a tub. Obviously this could vary greatly on the size of cake or amount of icing. This is ready to pipe from room temperature and holds its shape very well.

The flavour of this is too overpowering. Its not a nice subtle flavour but it overpowers everything. For everything else this icing is great, the only problem being the flavour of vanilla being too strong. But after all its vanilla flavoured and someone else might love the strong flavour of vanilla.

For a special occasion on a cake/cupcake which would be out in the open say on a warm day this would hold shape better than buttercream.

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The answer to your cupcake frosting dilemmas. An easy icing way to ice a batch of cupcakes!

Cupcakes have grown in popularity since they were introduced to us from America. Vanilla icing can be extremely expensive to get wrong... for instance the consistency can be temperamental and flavouring can be overpowering if too much is poured in. Betty Crocker's Ready to Spread icing was recommended to me via an online icing tutorial on YouTube and remains the answer to all the problems...

-PACKAGING-The icing comes in a cylinder pot (roughly 17cm in height and 25cm in circumference), usually 450g. The icing is protected by the soft plastic material (both pot and lid) and secured by a thin metal sheet to keep it fresh. The packaging is easily recognisable via the red 'Betty Crocker' banner... and each flavour is distinctive from the next (vanilla having a beige background and chocolate with a brown).

-THE ICING-I was impressed by how much the icing filled the packaging... literally to the very top (a bit like how much Ben and Jerry's ice cream can cram in). It claims to contain enough to cover and fill a 9" (23cm) round sandwich cake or 32 cupcakes. There is no need to add other ingredients, it is literally 'ready to spread'. The icing is extremely strong in flavour, almost to the point of being sickly. It is probably best not to use a lot on your cakes to avoid them becoming too overpowering. Decorations would sit nicely on a light frosting. The sugar content is understandably high... Each 37.5g serving of icing contains 26.3g (or 29% of an adults guideline daily amount). The icing is thick in consistency, so i guess it would be suitable for a piping bag, but very easy to spread using a palette knife or something similar. I recommend leaving the icing to set overnight so it sets and prevents escaping decorations! I like the idea that you can use store any excess icing away in the fridge really easily (literally just pop the lid back on) and come back to it within a month. I have only ever used the vanilla and buttercream style icing and remain a loyal customer :)

-RECOMMENDED USE-Cupcakes make a great change to the traditional birthday cake, and are so much fun to make! As students, my flatmates and i regularly put our excellent cooking skills to good use and make a batch every time it is someone's birthday... Obviously casual cupcake making is still suitable, because there is no need to spend the time making the batch of icing, which saves time (and the washing up!)

-PRICE-This product is available down the cake-making isle in all good supermarkets, priced between £1.50 and £2. I picked one up today at Asda for £1.70.

If you have a sweet tooth, and are too lazy to make your own batch of icing, this product is for you. It may seem like an expensive solution to your cake-making problems but i truly believe the price constitutes the amount you get per pot. Happy baking!

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Thank You Betty, That's Easier Than Making My Own!!!

When I made some fairy cakes with my sister the other day we had got quite big things to decorate with them so I knew I needed a heavier icing than I usually make. I remembered using Betty Crocker icing before and knew that was thick so when I went to Sainsburys I brought a tub of their Ready To Spread Icing in vanilla flavour.

It cost £1.75 for a 450g tub but I didn't mind that because I knew it would do all 12 fairy cakes and there would be some over for a cake my other sister wanted to make.

As soon as you open the tub you can smell the vanilla, it looks very thick and shiny and I knew it would taste good. It's ready to spread so you can just dig your knife in and spread it straight away but I think it's best to put it in a bowl and give it a bit of a stir first because that makes it lighter to spread. It's a bit gooey before you do that and if you're not careful you'll end up pulling the top of your cake off when you start spreading! lol

The icing is MAJORLY sweet, it's bad because the smell invites you to pile loads on your cake and it's not until you eat your first one that you realise you've put too much on! lol It's tooth achingly sweet so I recommend you don't go TOO mad with it, I deffo went overboard the first time I used it and my cakes were too sickly to eat so this time I put about half the amount on and the cakes were still lovely and sweet but didn't make you want to puke after 2 mouth fulls!

The vanilla flavour is delish, it doesn't taste as strong as it smells but it still strong enough. I love the taste of it because the vanilla and sugar mix is delish, the sweetness went nice with the sponge but I was glad I only used jelly decorations on the cakes because more sugary ones would have deffo been over load.

When you've opened the tub you can get away with keeping it in the fridge for a day, it says 2 days on the tub but it will slowly start going solid and after 2 days it would be too hard to spread. My sister used what was over the day after I did these fairy cakes and it was fine but deffo needed a stir then to get it looking glossy again.

Recommended..... delish vanilla flavour icing that will hold your decorations in place and tastes yummy!

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Use something else

If you fall into the same trap as me namely you buy Betty Crocker Ready to Spread Icing in vanilla flavour and you find it too sweet and you don't like its aftertaste try to get the best out if it.

I bought loads of ingredients to my son's birthday cake as I had no idea what cream should I use to get a tasty cake which can be covered with marzipan. As I bake regularly I will use them so it wasn't waste of money.

This ready to spread icing comes in a plastic tub. You can recognise it from the red spoon logo on it. The tub contains 450 g icing and it is available in Sainsbury's for 1.69 pounds. I haven't seen it in Tesco. It is available in vanilla a chocolate tastes. I bought the vanilla one. After I opened the jar I saw the odd white coloured icing. I tasted it and is buttery and has strong vanilla taste but somehow it has a bad aftertaste I didn't like at all. It had very nice texture and was really easy to spread. I used some to cover a chocolate cake for my friend, that was the practice. As I used only a little just to get the marzipan stick to the cake they haven't even realised that I used icing.

As you can see it is not a healthy looking thing and as I have mentioned previously it has a strange aftertaste. So I wanted to fill the cake which was made of 3 sponge cake levels and I wanted to cover it. I put a bag of ground almond (250 g) into a bawl and poured 60 ml hot (almost boiling) milk on it. I mixed it well. Then I added the tub of ready to spread icing to it and mix it well. If you don't use all the icing you can close the tub and store it in the fridge. It is advised to use it within a month. Now it had a really good taste. You can do the same with coconut if you prefer them to almond. The cream was still spreadable and it was enough to fill and cover the cake. I took care to the edges of the cake to fill well with cream. It was a good base for the marzipan cover as it stuck well to the cake. My son loved his cake and I was really proud of my masterpiece.

For more information about the brand visit www.bettycrocker.co.uk

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TASTY BUT I DON'T THINK MY FILLINGS AGREE

I feel ill..toothache!

*About the Product*

This is a ready to spread vanilla flavoured icing made by Betty Crocker. Betty Crocker produces a range of baking ingredients and toppings for those who wish to bake at home. It is described as being rich and creamy.

*The Packaging*

The icing comes in a cylinder tub which is white. The red lid is made of plastic and has the Betty Crocker spoon logo on it. When you lid the lift off, there is a silver foil lid. Around the tub is a removable label. The label contains information on the name and brand of product, weight, directions for use, hints and tips, company details and ingredients but does not contain nutritional information. The ingredients are also in Icelandic and Scandanavian.

*How to use*

The icing is ready to use straight from the tub. To use simply stir the icing, brush crumbs off the cake you intend to decorate, spread evenly on the cooled cake.

If you have any icing remaining, cover and refrigerate. Best to be used within 30days of opening.

The label advises how to ice a sandwich cake - place 1 layer topside down on a plate and spread 75g of icing almost to the edge. Place the other half topside up, on iced layer. Ice sides with a thin coat first to seal the crumbs, then ice side and top evenly.

*How much is in the tub*

The tub contains 450g of icing and this is enough to cover and fill a 9" round sandwich cake or cover 32 cupcakes.

Produced in the US for General Mills, Switzerland. Distributed in the UK and Ireland by General Mills UK, PO Box 363, Uxbridge, Middlesex, UB8 1YT 0800 783 5907 www.bettycrocker.co.uk

*Availability*

Within the UK, this icing is available in Asda, Sainsburys, Tesco, Waitrose, Co-Op and Morrisons and is priced around the £1.70 mark on average for a 450g tub.

*My Opinion*

I love to bake and my speciality is fairy cakes. Normally I just leave them plain as I can never seem to make icing very well so I just had to give this a go when I spotted it in Asda. I used this last year to decorate fairy cakes for my sons birthday party, but I made some fairy cakes last night as a treat and had picked this up in Asda the day before. So my fairy cakes were cooking...

I opened the foil lid and was immediately hit by an overly sweet vanilla scent. The icing is a creamy/off white colour and very soft though not runny. It is not stiff however it won't roll of your spoon and needs to be spread. The cakes were still cooling so i dipped my spoon in to try this and the flavour came flooding back to me. Needless to say that I only had 2 spoonfuls as this is very sweet and sugary and anymore than this and I would have been sick. So I took a fresh spoon and scooped out enough to cover a fairy cake. I dolloped it on the middle of my cake and used the back of my spoon to smooth it to the edges of the fairy cake. The last time I used this, I had it in the fridge however used at room temperature this time and it smoothed out so much easier.

I decided to only decorate half of my dozen cakes to avoid a sugar overload! I left them to set overnight. By morning, the icing has firmed up enough that it won't go everywhere if put in a box. It was still soft enough to be smooth upon eating. I was very impressed with my cakes and the topping. At the price it cost, it is ideal if you are baking for a party however if you only bake occasionally I do feel you would be wasting money as you do not use a great deal of this unless you have a massive sweet tooth. I normally do but my fillings won't allow it! I only used about a sixth of the tub on my cakes and the rest has been put in the fridge. Whether or not it gets used in the next 30days is a different story.

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Quick fix but not for me.

On a rare day off work the other day, I felt the sudden urge to do a spot of baking. I made a lovely batch of chocolate buns and set about getting the icing sugar out to make some icing for them. I've never had much luck with getting the consistency right with icing sugar and, true to form, I made a right hash of it and had to ditch the icing, leaving my buns undecorated.

I had seen ready to spread icing in the supermarkets but hadn't paid much attention to it so I didn't really know what it was like but knew it existed so I popped to the shop to get some. Betty Crocker Ready to Spread Icing was the only option. Vanilla flavour was the only flavour there although according to the packet, chocolate and fudge flavours are also available. I paid £1.96 for a 450 gram tub and went back to ice my buns!

I was expecting the icing to be glossy and runny like the icing made with icing sugar. When I took the lid off the tub and peeled back the plastic film seal I was surprised to see it was more like frosting than icing, like a thick butter cream. Not being able to resist, I got a teaspoon and had a taste. I was overwhelmed by the sickly sweetness of the vanilla, I hadn't expected the vanilla to be such a strong taste and I was disappointed to find that I didn't like it! The texture of the icing is thick and creamy as it says on the tub.

I iced half the batch of the buns with this icing and found that it was very easy to spread with a knife or the back of a spoon. It looked lovely on the buns and didn't run down the sides like icing can do. The consistency of this icing simply isn't like that, it stays put and spreads where you want it to.

Although the icing was quite sickly (when I ate a teaspoon full on its own), once on the bun and eaten along with the bun, the vanilla flavour wasn't so strong and it wasn't as sickly as I had first found. However, it did add a heaviness and a sickliness to an otherwise non-heavy non-sickly bun! I was glad I had only iced half the buns. My fiance however, thought it was great and demolished two buns before attacking the tub of icing with a spoon. Horses for courses I suppose!

This icing doesn't set on the buns either, it stays soft and makes your fingers very sticky, possibly not the best to use if you have small children! I much prefer icing that sets hard.

As a quick fix, this icing did the job, it just wasn't to my taste. At £1.96 for a tub, it is very reasonably priced. No nutritional values on the tub but I guess the icing has no nutritional value! Won't be buying it again but will persevere with the old icing sugar instead!

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Ok if you can't make your own

This year for Children In Need the company I work for were having several fundraising events throughout the day, one of the things they do each year is a cake stall so I volunteered to bake a cake for it. Looking through my recipe book I thought that a marble cake would be a good idea and set off to the supermarket to buy some ingredients. It was while I was browsing the shelves in the baking aisle I realised that if I put icing on it I would have no way to get the cake to work without ruining it. Then I spotted some ready made icing that could potentially save the day. It was Betty Crocker Ready to Spread Icing. It was available in chocolate or vanilla, I chose vanilla mainly because it was a bit cheaper. This meant I could ice the cake just before it was being served.

The icing comes in a 450g tub with a red lid, and cost £1.75.

To use you simply take the lid off of the tub and peel back a foil seal, you then give the icing a stir and spread it over your cake (after brushing the crumbs off).

You can definitely smell the vanilla of the icing when you remove the foil, it smells very much the same as the bottles of vanilla flavouring you get which suggests it's a synthetic flavouring and after checking the ingredients I can't actually see vanilla listed so I guess I might be right?

To get a fair judge of the flavour I thought it was only right to taste some of this before it went on the cake and had other flavours mixing in with it. It tastes of vanilla too although a bit of an artificial flavour, it is also REALLY sweet, probably more so than the butter cream I usually make. It is nice and smooth though. I do have a sweet tooth but I wouldn't want to eat lots of this especially on its own.

Anyway back to icing the cake, it went on to the cake and spread really easily with a pallet knife, it does have a home made look to it and has a nice creamy colour.

The label on the tub says that the contents are enough to cover and fill a 9" (23cm) round sandwich cake or up to 32 cupcakes. My cake was a 9" square and covering the top used about 1/3 of the tub. I have since made another slightly smaller square cake and there is still more than a 1/3 left.

Any unused icing can be stored in the fridge if covered and is best eaten within 30 days.

If you want to you can add food colouring to the icing if you need a different colour.

There isn't any nutritional information on the label but I don't think it's going to be the healthiest thing you'll ever buy.

This was really useful for what I bought it for but I can't say I would buy it again unless I was in the same situation again, although it tastes nice enough I prefer my own butter cream icing and it's a lot cheaper to make it myself and it only takes a few minutes.